Baker on Trump and Newsom Trading Insults: Trump Operates Better When He Has a Political Enemy, He Looks for People to Contend With

RUSH EXCERPT:
BAKER: "Well, Trump always operates better when he has an enemy, right? Politically speaking, he is most comfortable when he has somebody to go after. And at the moment he doesn’t have a challenger, right? He doesn’t have a, you know, another candidate to go after. And so he’s looking for people to, to contend with. He likes to mix it up. In some ways Gavin Newsom is an obvious, you know, antagonist. He’s the head of the largest state in the country. He’s the head of a state that is seen as an example of liberal America, which Trump is targeting in so many ways through academia, through law firms, through, you know, the news organizations and so on. He, you know, Trump believes that he or at least is given the idea that he is deconstructing the liberal state, as it were, as it’s developed over the last number of generations. And in some ways, Gavin Newsom represents that. He represents the state that represents that. He’s also, you know, Newsom is a pugilist as well. He has some of the trumpian qualities. He’s willing to get out there and mix it up himself. He doesn’t mind a good scrap politically. I think he likes being the one who will take on Donald Trump and being, you know, the one person that Trump seems most eager to fight with. It works for him. It works for him politically. But I think, you know, as we just said, obviously there are a lot of real people involved here, too, in politics. Given that we’re three and a half years away from a presidential election, seem pretty, pretty small compared to the stakes involved for a lot of real people who are facing, you know, both situations in the streets and situations with ice and situations, you know, in so many other ways."